Posted by Lonnie Ratliff Short Story on June 26, 2008, 5:40 pm
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Sharecropper’s Rose
By
Lonnie Ratliff
Clayton pulled his car over to the side of the narrow paved road as far as he could and as he stepped out he looked up and down the road and walked around the car to see if there was enough clearance there for another vehicle to get by, just on the outside chance that one should come by on this lonesome Oklahoma stretch of blacktop. He decided he was probably far enough off to the side that someone could squeak by on the outside, if they happened to be coming this way. He hadn’t passed anyone in either direction since he turned North off highway 3 between Atoka and Antlers on to the Miller Road.
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That drive East from Atoka had brought back a flood of memories, especially as he passed the Atoka Pushmataha county line where the old Darwin store had stood in 1954. He and his little brother had walked three miles from another one of the little shotgun shacks in this area that they had lived in. They had taken the quarter their mom had given him and bought a quart of kerosene for the kerosene lamp the family used for light for a dime, two soda pops for six cents each, and three cents worth of penny candy. A pretty good haul for a quarter compared to what twenty five cents would buy today.
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This highway was filled with a lifetime of memories but Clayton was able to just let them fly by like trailers from a movie, until he came to the Darwin cemetery. He slowed down a little as he glanced out across that field of stone and thought about pulling into the cemetery, but decided that although it was something he would have to deal with eventually, he could put off that meeting with the ghosts of his past until a later date after he had reinforced himself with a few more pleasant memories from his past. Maybe it would be best to save it until he was leaving Pushmataha county for what he was sure would more than likely be the last time.
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Clayton had pulled off the side of Miller road right where the entrance to the old Tarkington place had been. Back then it had been an old run down cattle guard and but now there was a gate complete with a chain and lock. He glanced up to where the house had once stood and nothing remained but a fallen down chimney and a bunch of grown up weeds. This was where his family lived in 1965 when Clayton had graduated from high school. An old house with no electricity, no running water and an outhouse. A setting that would have fit right in with Steinbeck’s "Grapes of Wrath" was home sweet home back then. Clayton didn’t really see any reason to walk the fifty yards up to where the house had burned down but he had already come this far so he decided to go ahead. He climbed over the locked gate, walked up to where the house once stood and kicked around through the ancient rubble, even though he had no idea what he expected to find. He didn’t figure the new owners would care even if they happened by and besides they probably lived in Oklahoma City or Dallas anyway. It wasn’t like there was anything left to steal.
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He walked into what he guessed would have been the living room, though he did not trust his memory enough that he would have bet any money on it. Lying half buried in the dirt was the charred remains of an old cap pistol that had been in the house when it had burned down. There was probably a pretty good chance that it had once been a prized possesion of one of his little brothers. Then he saw the old burned out wooden kitchen stove where his mom had cooked many a meal. Since he remembered where it had set against the north wall of the kitchen he was able to orient himself, and all of a sudden he was back in the old home place, instead of standing in the middle of a cow pasture on the Miller road. Clayton just stood there as forty four years rolled away and he was once again a sixteen-year-old kid with his whole life ahead of him. He was still in this halfway hypnotic trance as he walked out the back of the house toward what once was the barn, passing by where the well used to be. There was the old tree where they had hung a hog they were butchering and he had hung a borrowed chain hoist to pull the motor out of his ’46 Ford pickup.
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Clayton judged the distance to where he thought the barn would have been and sure enough he saw a few worn out cultivator plows and some pieces of chain to verify that this was indeed where the old barn had been. As he glanced around he realized that this was about all there was left of the old home place and soon time would even take that.
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Clayton figured he might as well get back to the car and drive on to Antlers and drop in on his sister that he hadn’t seen in years. As he started walking back toward the car he noticed that he had drifted over to the right as he had walked past the old home site. He then remembered that this was where there used to be an old fence that separated the house from pasture, which had been rented to Jackie Greenwood to run his cattle.
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There had been an old dirt road alongside the fence although all signs of the road were long gone; it was just instinct that had him walking where it had once been. Clayton walked to a point which would have been the corner of the yard when he saw it there. He froze and stared in disbelief. There it was, somehow still alive and bravely fighting the battle of time. How could this be? The odds had to be astronomical, but against all odds out in the middle of what now was a pasture, was the rose bush his late Mother had planted in 1965. Clayton walked over to the rose bush and just sat down on the ground closed his eyes and let his life pass in review.
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This is the first half of the Sharecropper's Rose story. I will post the last part in this newsletter next week. As usual your comments are welcome. Just send me an E Mail at: NashvilleShowcase@comcast.net
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Copr. 2008 Lonnie C. Ratliff
Acknowledgments: Erin Hay for the original idea to flesh out this partially true story. We are now writing a song together with this same title..
Linda Carter for making sure my original hen scratchings and poor spelling became readable.
And for convincing me I had something worth saying Bill Littleton, Jim Carter and Dick Damron.
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